[1] After he acquired property at a place later known as Burnsville on the Caraquet River, including a hydraulically-powered sawmill, he entered the lumber trade as K. F. Burns and Company.

As a Roman Catholic, he opposed the Common Schools Act of 1871 and formed a legal defence fund for the people who had been charged in the wake of the riots and manslaughter at Caraquet over the issue.

Burns supported Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s National Policy, and in turn it led to his rise as railway industrialist.

After the death of Burns and twinned with the disestablishment of Novelli & Company in March 1894, the Courrier des Provinces Maritimes reported 19 September 1895 that the Sumner Company from Moncton had purchased the SLLC, but two weeks later the same newspaper reported that the English shareholders had rejected the offer of $29,000, in favour of Adams & Co. of New York.

[1] In 1914 after a period of fluidity in the region's establishment, the Bathurst Power and Paper Company would emerge from the ABC amalgamated together with various local interests.